Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that Israeli security experts working for a private security firm, Global CST...were involved in the operation to rescue high-profile hostage Ingrid Betancourt from the FARC rebel group

Sunday July 6, 2008, 2:40 am
this is bollocks! She was not rescued, the 15 hostages were bought, $20 million! There is only one reporter who denounced the lie. i'm sorry all the links i have are in french, i couldn't find any, but here is the one from the switz radio that reported reality: http://info.rsr.ch/fr/news/Une_liberation_achetee.html?siteSect=2010&sid=9296405&cKey=1215168475000
Plus, bush might not be innocent in the story... but is this a surprize?
Anyway, they are all trying to protect the lie that a squad rescued the hostages, for it gives such a good image of the militry & violence, doesn't it?
Dammit!

Thanks for the reality check, Pel. Yes, Jill and I have both posted stories about the set-up and the ransom. But that doesn't mean that Israeli security forces were not involved in the planning, and they're certainly involved in the cover-up now, if they weren't before.

But you're quite correct that this was not an "Entebbe style rescue" as they might want people to believe. THAT is indeed "bollocks."

Sunday July 6, 2008, 3:29 am
Why can't you just rejoice in the fact that these hostages are now free? It seems to me that everyone on the thread I visited to read the stories and comments would have preferred to see those hostages killed so the you can all lambast your "Bush administration" some more. Where is your concrete proof the either the US, Israel or $20 million ransom was involved. All of that is nothing but speculation. I just can't believe you people are for real.

Mark, as this is posted by you, please feel free to remove this and block me. If you could just see yourselves as outsiders do - it would serve as a real eye-opener. People are laughing at you but are too afraid to say what they think in case the get flagged, blocked or kicked off Care2. I, for one, don't care either way

There is no more blocking in news stories, Marena, and I certainly wouldn't flag you. There is a global struggle between fascism and democracy, and it is quite possible that we are on opposite sides of the struggle, but I wouldn't try to silence or censor you -- that's what fascists do.

Nobody wanted to see the hostages killed, Marena, and that's an unfair allegation. What I personally would like to see is an end to the death squads in Colombia that the FARC have been trying to resist. The death squads don't take hostages and place them in as severe conditions as the poor in Colombia have to endure every day of their lives. The death squads just kill.

As for the "speculation," you may prefer to believe what is in the mainstream media, but some of us prefer alternative sources, such as investigative journalists familiar with the situation. If you think that the mainstream media is more trustworthy and credible than people who have serious credentials investigating human rights abuses, you are entitled to your opinion and your preferences.

But it really isn't the good government vs. the evil hostage-takers. It is a government that has been committing genocide against indigenous peoples and using death squads for a long time, against the remnants of indigenous and poor people they haven't yet managed to kill but are still trying to exterminate.

I know the fascists, the wealthy elite, the death squads, and their minions are laughing at me. I know that they have many supporters among those who see nothing wrong with exterminating indigenous peoples so that the big multinational corporations can exploit their land and resources, and so that corrupt governments can get favored treatment by selling out their own people. But if you pay attention, you'll see that on this website there are also some people who care about the poor and the voiceless. And they're not laughing at anybody because they aren't sadists or torturers or murderers, they are human rights activists. Real ones, not phony ones who censor and ban people for expressing their opinion.

And another reason I can't just rejoice, Marena, is because some of those "hostages" were private military contractors, otherwise known as mercenaries, otherwise known as death squad leaders and trainers. And now that they are free, they can go back to killing unarmed and defenseless villagers. That doesn't make me want to rejoice at all.

Sunday July 6, 2008, 8:22 am
That's allright Mark. My objection was merely the fact that just about everyone here (and on other stories as well) has to introduce the "sinister involvement of the hated Bush Administration" Not everything revolves around the US and your administration and until someone can show me concrete evidence of US or Israeli involvement in this rescue, or that it was achieved by paying $20 million ransom, I prefer not to speculate.

I do agree with you on the death squad issue and the trauma to the people caused by their leaders who seem to be personally directing the actions of those death squads. But who are the members of those squads? Colombians! Killing their own people. For what? Money is my guess. One has to be a few rungs below human to kill ones fellow citizens.

This is another example of how hard it is to get a straight answer from our government, which is also why so many people are suspicious about anything they do that,on the surface, appears to be a good deed.

Marena, in reality, the U.S. government, under the guise of a "war on drugs," has spent billions of dollars helping the Colombian government recruit, arm, train, and direct the death squads that kill their indigenous people. The private military contractors released along with Ingrid Betancourt are some of the U.S. mercenaries there to provide leadership to the U.S.-backed death squads.

When torture training (School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) and billions of dollars, along with U.S. mercenaries are provided to Colombia by Bush (and by previous Democratic administrations also), it would be incorrect to attribute the death squads to Colombia alone.

It is the United States that is personally funding, arming, and directing the actions of those death squads, and of many others around the world. And you are absolutely right in that it is done for money so that the big multinational corporations can exterminate indigenous people and exploit natural resources by destroying and polluting their land, with the only purpose being to further enrich their already obscenely wealthy elite stockholders.

While the evidence of this particular incident may not surface for a while, we have conclusive evidence, including mass graves, of the activities of U.S.-backed death squads throughout Latin America for decades. Had the hostages not included U.S. mercenaries, people might have been quicker to accept the official story or to think that it had nothing to do with the U.S.

well, i eventually found an article in english, so here it is: http://www.care2.com/news/member/532563539/803177

i don't think there is any reason to feel happy about the mistreatment of people, either human or non human. i don't believe in treating others cruelly or badly. This is the reason why i'm fighting against domination, either from humans toward non humans, men toward women, races toward other races, & the list is quite long since our world is rules by domination.
Anyhow, since "Truth" is so hard to find i think it is important to spread the word about it when you find information. People can laugh, if it makes them happy, & even if one person only gets the info as serious & changes things in their way of thinking, i think it was worth being laughed at by the other 6 999 999 999 people. Because this one person can spread the word & move another person, & so on. This is how it goes.
Now considering the lack of proves marena? i don't understand how you not see the proves? Simply read this article i just posted (http://www.care2.com/news/member/532563539/803177) & you will obviously find out about the proves since all statements are linked to a text that supports it.
Anyway, thanks again mark for spreading the word!

Thank you, Pel. I'm going to post the entire article that Pel linked, but you have to go to the article itself in order to click the links that will take you to the documents and sources for each statement.

The Real "Operation" to Rescue Ingrid Betancourt and US Mercenaries
In order to understand the "rescue operation" of Ingrid Betancourt and the Northrop Grumman Corporation mercenaries who were released with her, it is necessary to piece together articles published in the media, filter the content and out of this is formed a true understanding of the facts of what happened here.

The Real Operation to "Rescue" Ingrid Betancourt and US Mercenaries

In order to understand the "rescue operation" of Ingrid Betancourt and the Northrop Grumman Corporation mercenaries who were released with her, it is necessary to piece together articles published in the media, filter the content and out of this is formed a true understanding of the facts of what happened here. A version in Portuguese is available here.

1. On June 3rd, Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba revealed that she possessed information that the government of Colombia was negotiating a deal with FARC to trade money for the release of Betancourt and the mercenaries. The official policy of the United States is that they don't "negotiate with terrorists," even as many leaders of Latin American countries accuse President Uribe of supporting the AUC paramilitary death squads and accuse the United States of providing safe harbor to known terrorists such as Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles.

2. Careful observers began to question the strange circumstances under which the "dramatic rescue" of Ingrid Betancourt happened. Some guys with Che Guevara t-shirts simply showed up and redirected them into another helicopter ? If it were that easy, why didn't they do that years ago ? The French media also found strange the fact that Betancourt didn't resemble the gaunt and hungry images we have been seeing in the media -- she seemed well-fed and healthy, as if she were being prepared for release.

3. More confusion came when the capitalist media seized this opportunity to hack up Betancourt's press conference, keeping in the parts that glorified Uribe and the United States and excluding the parts that talked about Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Ecuador's Rafael Correa and their important efforts in finding a diplomatic, peaceful solution to the crisis. The press conference was broadcast in its entirety on the Latin American news network, Telesur, but only bit and pieces were shown on CNN, Fox News and other northern news channels. For instance, excluded from the edited version is Betancourt's comments that she felt used by the whole situation and that the operation put the lives of the hostages at risk while a diplomatic solution, like the one pursued by President Chavez, would ensure their safety.

4. The capitalist media, without any shame, immediately began to use the situation to promote their own political objectives : everywhere in the corporate media, Uribe was lauded as a hero, FARC's days are numbered and Chavez's successful and peaceful diplomacy that freed other FARC-held prisoners was downplayed.

5. However, on Friday, information began to be revealed that, in reality, the government of Colombia had secretly paid $20 million USD to FARC in exchange for the release of Betancourt and the US mercenaries, confirming what Senator Cordoba had said a month before. This story was broken by MediaPart in France and Radio Suisse Romande. MediaPart also reported that France and Colombia guaranteed safe asylum for some members of FARC as part of the deal.

6. Dominique Moisi, one of France's most prominent foreign policy experts, said that it was "probable" that FARC was given money in exchange for the prisoners. "They were bought in order to turn them around, like Mafia chiefs," he said on French state television.

7. In light of all these events, the government of

Ecuador has suspended diplomatic relations with Colombia.

8. The report of the $20 million pay-off is now rapidly circulating throughout the corporate media as it struggles with a way to spin this news. The confusion caused by this bizarre operation makes a lot more sense when viewed as a

pre-arranged, money-for-prisoners exchange. And, the true face of the Latin American right-wing is once again exposed.

9. It is worth repeating that along with Betancourt, also released were private military contractors from the United States who were captured when their surveillance plane went down in FARC-controlled territory during a Plan Colombia operation. Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and arms manufacturing firm, was awarded a $60 million contract to provide logistical support to the US and Colombian military, on the ground in war zones there. Between 1990 and 2002, Northrop Grumman contributed $8.5 million to federal campaigns. Coincidentally, at least "seven former officials, consultants or shareholders of Northrop Grumman" have held posts in the Bush administration, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby (who was convicted on obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and making false statements to federal investigators for his role in illegally "outing" CIA agent Valerie Plame). In addition, Plan Colombia has been repeatedly criticized by international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and the United Nations, for

maintaining close relationships with right-wing death squads, providing direct assistance to illegal right-wing terrorist organizations as well as directly and indirectly participating in massacres and atrocities. Many of the right-wing terrorists operating in Colombia are former members of the Colombian military, like paramilitary commander "Yair," who openly support Plan Colombia and publicly offer their support to Plan Colombia operations.

10. Finally, it should be noted that the Colombian government under Uribe, who has enjoyed widespread celebration by the corporate press in the last few days, is routinely condemned as having one of the worst human rights records of any country in the world. More than 60 members of President Uribe's congressional coalition are under investigation for election fraud or collaborating with right-wing groups classified as "terrorist organizations" by the United States. Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for labor union organizers, with the world's highest rate of assassinations and extra-judicial executions of trade unionists. Since Plan Colombia began, the United States has

provided over $4.7 billion to the government of Colombia, described by Senator Cordoba as a "democracy that governs through fear and terror." Senator Cordoba, herself, was kidnapped by 12 heavily-armed government-affiliated terrorists. Senator Cordoba says that the operations of Plan Colombia are only partly used to fight the so-called "war on drugs" : "It's also used to silence those of us who speak out against the government. They try to silence us by kidnapping, disappearing and even killing many of us." Unlike many other Latin American countries, who overthrew the brutal US-backed dictatorships which ruled the continent during much of the 20th century, Colombia is an active reminder of what life used to be like throughout all of South America
- fiercely repressive dictatorships which terrorize the population with money and weapons provided by the United States in exchange for support of U.S. policies. How can a government like this receive the kind of tributes and congratulations that have been showered on them by the capitalist press in the last few days since they traded $20 million for the release of Ingrid Betancourt and U.S. mercenaries ? How can a supposedly free and democratic media uncritically praise a government like this ?

Today,

Fidel Castro made one of the most sensible declarations about this situation : the imprisonment of civilians is wrong but what is worse is that the United States and the western, capitalist press are exploiting this situation to obscure and justify the genocidal horrors that they have imposed on Latin America for hundreds of years, up to and including this very day.

Even now, the soldiers of Plan Colombia and their right-wing death squads continue murdering union leaders in cold blood, continue terrorizing the civilian population of Colombia, and continue protecting terrorists who hunt down and kill anyone seeking social justice in the region, a cause that threatens the profit and power of the dominant, ruling class.

Even when the United States and their Latin American allies attempt to create a spectacle of positive public relations for themselves, their hands are so bloody and their crimes are so deep that, in the end, their fabrications do little to change the reality on the ground. Like all dictatorships in human history, their lies are so transparent, their brutality is so brazen and their lifespan is so limited.